The CV is dead! At least as we know it. In this week’s episode, we look at…
- How the traditional CV of two pages is becoming less and less useful
- Why your formal qualifications are not the most important element of building your credibility as an expert
- The more useful questions you need to ask yourself and clarity you need to build an effective personal brand to open up the best opportunities in the future
Tune in for more on why your personal brand is the new CV…
*Resources mentioned during the episode*
1:1 Coaching & Mentoring – If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching
Traditional CV
Hello there. Welcome back. I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, and we’re talking your PB is your CV as I’ve come up with now PB I think his personal best in kind of Olympic running, and so on terms, but for me PB is personal brand. So I hope you share that acronym with me. But anyway, today’s message is that your personal brand is actually your new CV, for a number of reasons. Right, so let’s dive in. So, CVS, as we know, you have been for a long time, the way in which we apply to jobs, the, you know, that was the first thing I did I remember coming out of university, I mean, my education and so on, took up the whole, you know, big, big font, we had no work experience, really everything you did every like award, you got a high school, and so when will be on that, right. And that will be really important. Ironically, even though you had no work experience, then I’m trying to think when I then was applying to, I sort of half heartedly applied to some jobs actually, after I quit my job back in 2013 2014, before I spontaneously decided to start my business. And then I’d been doing certain things. And of course, it was very consistent, but the work experience was very different to my university degree. And, you know, depending on where I wanted to go, I was trying to sorry, I’m babbling, this is not really the point of today, but I was going to say my education was in philosophy, politics, economics, international relations, and so on, I want to work at the UN. So obviously, when I was applying to the UN and NGOs, I positioned it a certain way, and then actually ended up in Procter and Gamble, which is how I, you know, started my corporate marketing career. And then after that, again, I was applying to sort of similar jobs within digital marketing, I think via a few recruiters and then also myself directly, you know, positioning really their digital expertise, but trying to get into a different industry. So movies and chocolate and coffee, I believe were the three that I was working on, so they go and since then, funnily enough, one of my clients who I’ve done workshops with suddenly asked me for, like my GCSE results and things which I found hilarious, but luckily, I’ve got pretty good GCSE results. GCSE, by the way for international is the exams we do at school when I was 15 at the time, and then we do a levels, although I did the International Baccalaureate, and so on. Who knew this would be a walk down memory lane, thanks for sticking with me. Thanks for indulging my little childhood memories here. But that’s sort of CVS have kind of been there for me always.
When I now have had my own business for 10 years.
I wouldn’t be interesting actually almost one to search CV, I might do it as I talk to you to see what my last version is. Because I really haven’t. I don’t know how I possibly find that on my computer. So bear with me. The point is, it’s been a very long time since I updated my CV and in fact, when this oh, here we go LinkedIn us up when this agency asked me for my CV, what I did was exported my LinkedIn because I’m like, Look, I don’t have a CV HIGO. Here’s my LinkedIn. So that’s my sort of 2023 CV and the fact that I can’t even find my CV tells you how long since I wrote it was this one could that be a CV? Probably not. There you go. Oh, actor CV, I’ve got that that’s a topic for another day. So CVS for me have totally lost their importance, because running my own business is completely meaningless. What’s interesting, as if you kind of freelancing and pitching and proposing and so on, that there’s you know, rather than the chronological CV, oh, here we go February 13. What shall we find, rather than the chronological CV that sort of a traditional employee would have, you could have more of a thematic CV. So that’s a creative way of doing it. So I’m looking here. Yeah, I’ve got my creative digital marketing professional with extensive experience in successfully building brands in the consumer goods industry following an international postgraduate education. And then I have all my Procter and Gamble roles, filling up a whole page, and then I have digital marketing consultant, and coach.
Alright, fine. So that’s the last time I updated it. There you go. What did I say February 2013. But that is not the point of today. Because the point is that as irrelevant the CV is, for me as a CV, it’s for me, I would argue that it is for you too. And although I know that most of you are now you know, working for yourself, so certainly going that way, I would argue that the same thing applies if you’re planning on staying within corporate. So your PB is your CV because the CV is just not a way in which you can bring to life, your expertise and experience. Now my personal experience of this when I was working in one of my consulting contracts, the story that always comes to mind for me was we had about 200 applicants for a role. I interviewed them I chose the top one recommended them and instead it went due to an organizational restructuring to an internal person who had no experience at all in that area and so on. Right so none of those 200 people including the really good ones, were given the role. So if you’re the applicant there, how on earth are you supposed to get past? You know, the automation that now has been reading see For a long time, right especially, and this is the case for for many of my clients, if you’re moving into a new industry, you probably don’t have the typical profile.
So you’re not going to have the keywords and the experience that the typical automation is going to be looking for.
So that’s been the case for a long time cover letters. I’ve seen controversial posts on LinkedIn that says that’s the say that that they’re dead since a long time to write. And not only does AI, read CVS and cover letters, now they also write them because as you will have experienced, and as we’ve talked about here on the podcast, chat GBT BOD all these AI tools now are even writing CVS and cover letters, right. So I think I predict and I rarely predict things as they’re not quite a futurist. But I would say that it’s very likely that CVs are going to lose their power going forward. So my philosophy on this, I think, will become all the more important, again, as a business owner, especially, it’s not about your CV, it’s not about your qualifications and certifications. It’s about what you stand for. And above all, the value you bring. So again, briefly, even if you are applying to jobs, and so on. Although I don’t necessarily help people as kind of a career coach and finding the next role. I always advise that you build your personal brand, your network, you have conversations with people, you put out content, and so on. Hopefully your your current employer is forward thinking enough to understand that that’s important for you as individuals, and that that has a positive effect on their company as well.
But you’re building your brand, my massive pet peeve is when people in their LinkedIn have just their job title of that company.
And then their whole about summary is just about the company. What if you get made redundant? What if you change company you’re about is not the you know, bio of like the Wikipedia entry for Procter and Gamble, right? Let’s say, you have so much more than that. And in fact, LinkedIn shouldn’t even be your CV anyway. But again, that’s not the topic feel like this is a ranting episodes, apologies, I’m getting to the point here. In that scenario, when there are 200 applicants plus, in a market where you know, there are a lot of people applying for jobs and so on, there are lots of redundancies, perhaps in the industry and so on, you have to go beyond, you know, it doesn’t doesn’t matter that you’ve sent out 200. CVS, they’re all then kind of copy paste, right? You may even have made the mistake of like put the wrong putting the wrong company in there. You know, you you will fine, you feel like you’ve done something, you’ve applied half heartedly to lots of jobs, but you’re not going to get them let’s be honest, because you haven’t really researched them, you’re not passionate about them, you don’t really want them. And you’re just one of a faceless crowd of people. So sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
However, if you are known in your industry, as someone who knows things as a subject, such as a subject matter expert, who creates content, who connects with people who, you know, you don’t have to be famous, we’re not talking celebrity influencer here, but we’re talking, you really have that profile, then it’s going to be such a better platform for you to open up opportunities, whether internally in your organization, in fact, externally and other organizations, other industries, other sectors, and certainly, above all, of course, when you’re working for yourself. So the key questions I want you to think about are, you know, what value do you bring? So what’s your value proposition? And I have a few questions for you. And of course, you can stop this and you can journal you could think about it. But this is not so much a workshop session today is just prompting you, poking you, nudging you to think about this, if you haven’t already. Questions like, what is it? You do? And we talked about niching last week, and by the way, if you missed the workshop, you can get the recording at once. tomorrow.com forward slash niche.
So what is it you do? Why do you do it? That big? Why is so important, right? Your your bigger kind of purpose? Your reasons for doing the work you do? What is it you care about in the world? And how do you do it? What makes you so unique? What do you do differently to other people, right? What’s your superpower? Or some people call it if you like that? Or your particular? quirk or flair? Right? So what do you do? Why do you do it? How do you do it? But even more philosophically? Who are you?
That’s a big question, right? But who are you beyond those lines and bullet points of your achievements on a CV? What’s the red thread through those experiences? What’s the story you want to tell? What do you know? What have you done? Because those are important questions. Right? So what have you experienced and it could be personal experiences as much as it could be professional, it could be gap years and child care and, you know, charitable foundations you’ve set up or volunteering or anything like that hobbies and all sorts. So who are you What have you done? What experience do you have? What do you know? And what do you stand for? And these are big questions. So I don’t expect you to have answers today. But this is the kind of work that you want to be doing. Again, whether you’re planning on quitting your job you’ve already quit. Definitely you need to be doing this work as a business owner as an expert as a solopreneur. But even if you’re for now yeah, pretty happy in my job, it’s pretty important to get clear on these pieces for salary increases promotions, internal opportunities, having that image within the company and so on. Right so, so important we’ll talk actually about the sort of different levels of personal brand progression next week and the concept of pie apple pie crumble I don’t know pi pi e. So really, really important your PB is your CV, your personal brand, and why not your personal best is your CV right? I cannot overemphasize this enough, I can’t emphasize this enough. It’s so powerful. I know it feels a bit. But you know, as I always say, you’ve got a personal brand, whether you want to or not, so let’s curate it let’s, you know, make sure it’s telling the world what you want it to tell. And really that starts with you getting clear on who you are and what you stand for. Hope that was a valuable episode. I look forward to your thoughts on this one and I will see you next week for the five levels of personal brand progression. Bye for now.
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1:1 Coaching & Mentoring
If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching
1:1 Coaching & Mentoring
If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring.
